Reputed boss of cartel may be tried in Texas

Mexican marines in face masks flank Jorge Costilla Sanchez and other suspects dressed in military fatigues, who are believed to be his bodyguards.

Photo By Dario Lopez-Mills

Mexican Navy marines escort Jorge Eduardo Costilla Sanchez, aka "El Coss," as he is shown to the press at the Mexican Navy's Center for Advanced Naval Studies in Mexico City,Thursday, Sept. 13, 2012. Costilla is believed to be the alleged leader of the Gulf drug cartel. One of Mexico's most-wanted men, the 41-year-old is charged in the U.S. with drug-trafficking and threatening U.S. law enforcement officials. U.S. authorities offered $5 million for information leading to his arrest.

HOUSTON — The man who is alleged to lead the Gulf Cartel, the oldest and largest crime syndicate on the South Texas-Mexico border, has been captured by a platoon of Mexican marines, but ultimately might face justice in the Bayou City.

Costilla, known as “El Cos,” and “La Sombra,” Spanish for the shadow, was arrested Wednesday night in the Mexican coastal city of Tampico.

Shackled and flanked by hooded military personnel, he was trotted out like a drug war trophy for a military news conference

“He is a significant trafficker and I applaud Mexico's efforts in capturing him,” said Javier Peña, head of the DEA's Houston Division, which reaches to the Mexican border. “This guy is a violent trafficker.”

The U.S. Justice Department had no comment on his arrest as well as whether prosecutors are pursuing his extradition to the United States to face trial.

Costilla is charged in the same indictment as former Gulf Cartel kingpin Osiel Cárdenas Guillén, who pleaded guilty in a locked, guarded Houston courtroom in 2009 and cooperated with authorities as part of a deal that will release him in 2025.

Cárdenas is being held in the so-called Supermax prison in Colorado, where his predecessor, Juan García Abrego, also is serving multiple life sentences after being convicted years earlier by a Houston jury.

Costilla was apprehended about 24 hours after his alleged right-hand man, Gabriel Montes, was arrested in Guadalajara by a Mexican marine patrol, said a law-enforcement source. The arrest led to Costilla.

Montes was with two other men getting out of an SUV and was carrying a backpack with a rifle barrel sticking out. A grenade also was in the backpack.

The Gulf Cartel has deteriorated mightily in the past few years, and Costilla's capture is seen as an opening for its rivals to take control of the prized Matamoros-Brownsville corridor for sneaking narcotics into the United States.

“It is like a bunch of hyenas when they see a caravel that is wounded — they grab it with a vengeance to devour it,” said Mike Vigil, the DEA's former chief of international operations. “We've seen it time and time again.”

Among the questions now is what will happen to the remaining Gulf Cartel operations and what that will mean for violence in cities along Rio Grande and down the Gulf Coast.

With its major ports, remote inlets and easy access to the border, the region remains prime smuggling turf, sure to be coveted by the Zetas and other gangs.

“I would say this is the death knell of the cartel,” Vigil said of the remnants of the Gulf Cartel. “They are going to be fighting for survival and the chances are they are not going to be able to survive. They just don't have the muscle.”

The Gulf Cartel drew the full attention of law enforcement in 1999 following a standoff in which about a dozen cartel members, including Cárdenas and Costilla, surrounded the U.S. agents, who were driving with a confidential informant through the cartel's home turf of Matamoros.

The standoff, during which the agents and their informant were nearly killed, came to an end when the gangsters were warned they'd be hunted for the rest of their lives if they opened fire.

The agents were released and told to never come back to Mexico.

Costilla's arrest is the latest in a string of precision blows landed by Mexico's naval special forces and marines.

While some Marine units are patrolling Mexican streets much like those of the army and federal police, it's the Navy's elite 7th Infantry Brigade that has become a favored strike force against top-shelf mobsters.

Marines captured another Gulf Cartel boss, Cárdenas' brother Mario, on Sept. 5 in Altamira, an industrial port city on the outskirts of Tampico.

They killed another Cárdenas brother, Ezequiel, known as “Tony Tormenta,” in Matamoros in November 2010.